If you employ staff in France, paid leave is not a perk you design — it is a tightly regulated entitlement set out in the Code du travail. Get the maths wrong and you risk back-pay claims, a labour inspector visit, and a frosty meeting with your works council. The French system also uses two different “working day” definitions and a reference period that does not match the calendar year, which trips up plenty of foreign employers.

This guide breaks down how annual leave (congés payés) works in France in 2026: how it accrues, who qualifies, what the reference period means in practice, and the obligations every employer needs to meet. Facts here come from the Code du travail (articles L.3141-1 to L.3141-33) and Service-Public.fr.

Key Takeaways

Employees accrue 2.5 working days (jours ouvrables) of paid leave per month worked, capped at 30 working days — five weeks — per reference year.
The default reference period runs 1 June to 31 May, although a collective agreement can align it with the calendar year.
Paid leave accrues from the first day of work, with no minimum service requirement.
Holiday pay must use the more favourable of two methods: the one-tenth rule or maintained salary.
Sick leave now counts as worked time for accrual, following 2024 case law aligning France with EU law.

The Statutory Entitlement: 30 Jours Ouvrables

Under article L.3141-3 of the Code du travail, employees in France earn 2.5 working days of paid leave for every month of actual work, up to a maximum of 30 working days per reference year. That is the equivalent of five working weeks.

The 30-day figure is expressed in jours ouvrables, which is where many international employers slip up. France uses two different “working day” concepts:

Jours ouvrables — Monday to Saturday, excluding Sunday and public holidays. The statutory minimum of 30 days is expressed in these.
Jours ouvrés — the days the business is actually open, typically Monday to Friday. Most modern employers and collective agreements (conventions collectives) restate the entitlement as 25 jours ouvrés, which is mathematically equivalent.

If your contract or HR system tracks leave in jours ouvrés, you must give employees at least 25 of them. If you track in jours ouvrables, the floor is 30. Mixing the two without a clear conversion is the single most common source of underpaid leave in France.

Many sectoral collective agreements add extra days on top — check the convention collective that applies to your activity before assuming the statutory floor is enough.

The Reference Period: 1 June to 31 May

French paid leave does not align with the calendar year by default. The historical reference period (période de référence) runs from 1 June to 31 May. Leave accrued in one reference year is typically taken in the following one.

This pattern dates back to the 1936 paid leave reform and remains the default. Since the Loi Travail (2016) and the Macron ordinances, a company-level or branch-level collective agreement can shift the reference period — for example to align with the calendar year — but only by formal agreement. Without one, the June–May default applies.

Practically, this means:

Leave earned between 1 June 2025 and 31 May 2026 becomes available to take from 1 June 2026 onwards.
Most employers ask staff to take their main holiday between 1 May and 31 October (the main leave period, or période de prise des congés).
The employer must inform staff of the leave period at least one month in advance.

If you are running payroll software built around a 1 January start, you will need to either configure a custom French leave year or negotiate a collective agreement to align the two — do not just assume the calendar year applies.

Who Is Eligible

Since the 2012 reform, all employees accrue paid leave from their first day of work. There is no minimum service or qualifying period. This applies regardless of contract type:

Permanent contracts (CDI)
Fixed-term contracts (CDD)
Apprenticeship contracts
Part-time and intermittent contracts

Part-timers accrue at the same 2.5 days per month. Their entitlement is in days, not pro-rated hours, which surprises employers used to UK or US pro-rating.

Employer Obligations Under the Code du travail

French law puts a series of positive duties on the employer — not just the obligation to pay for leave, but to actively organise it.

1. Allow Accrual at the Statutory Rate

You must let every employee accrue 2.5 working days per month worked, up to 30 per reference year. You cannot waive this through a contract clause; any agreement that gives less is void.

2. Set and Communicate the Leave Period

The leave period (période de prise des congés) must include the window from 1 May to 31 October. You must inform employees of the dates at least one month in advance, and post the order in which staff will take their leave (the ordre des départs).

3. Pay Leave Correctly

Holiday pay in France must use the more favourable of two calculations, recalculated for each employee, each leave taken:

The “one-tenth” rule (règle du dixième) — 10% of the gross remuneration earned during the reference year.
The maintained salary method (maintien de salaire) — what the employee would have been paid had they worked.

Whichever produces the higher figure is the one you owe. You cannot pick one method permanently and ignore the other.

4. Grant Continuous Leave

Employees have the right to take at least 12 working days (two weeks) of continuous leave during the main holiday period, and up to 24 working days in one block. You can refuse to split shorter than this without consent.

5. Pay Out on Termination

When a contract ends — for any reason except gross misconduct in some cases — you must pay an indemnité compensatrice de congés payés for any accrued, untaken leave. This applies to CDDs ending naturally, dismissals, and resignations alike.

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Fractionnement: Bonus Days for Splitting Leave

When statutory leave is split between the main holiday window and the rest of the year, French law gives the employee extra “splitting” days (jours de fractionnement) — a quirk many foreign employers miss entirely.

The rules:

3 to 5 days of statutory leave taken outside 1 May – 31 October → 1 extra day of paid leave.
6 or more days taken outside the main period → 2 extra days.

These bonus days apply only to the first 24 of the 30 statutory days (the original four-week core), not to the fifth week. A collective agreement can waive fractionnement days, but only by explicit text — silence does not remove the right.

Sick Leave and Paid Leave Accrual: The 2024 Shift

For decades, French law treated time off sick as not counting towards paid leave accrual. That changed.

Following a series of Cour de cassation rulings in September 2023 and the law of 22 April 2024 that brought France into line with EU Directive 2003/88/EC, sick leave now counts as worked time for the accrual of paid leave in most cases. Employees who are off sick continue to earn their 2.5 days per month, with limits set by the new statute.

If you operate older payroll rules that pause accrual during sickness, you are non-compliant. Update the configuration and review past balances — affected employees can claim retroactively within a defined window under the 2024 law.

Common Pitfalls

International employers and even some French SMEs trip over the same handful of issues. Avoid these:

Confusing jours ouvrables and jours ouvrés. The statutory minimum is 30 jours ouvrables. Tracking in jours ouvrés? Your floor is 25.
Assuming a calendar leave year. The default reference period is 1 June to 31 May. You need a collective agreement to change it.
Skipping fractionnement days. If staff split their statutory leave outside 1 May – 31 October, the bonus day(s) are owed unless a collective agreement says otherwise.
Pausing accrual during sickness. Post-2024, sick leave counts as worked time for accrual.
Picking one holiday pay method permanently. You owe the higher of the one-tenth rule or maintained salary, recalculated each time.
Ignoring the convention collective. Sectoral agreements regularly grant more than 30 days, longer continuous-leave blocks, or seniority-based extra days. Always check.

For a wider European comparison, our guide to annual leave laws in Germany, France, and the Netherlands covers how France compares to its neighbours, and our Spain and Italy annual leave guide handles the southern European picture. UK employers managing cross-border teams may also want our UK annual leave entitlement guide for a side-by-side comparison.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many days of paid leave per year in France?

Employees accrue 2.5 working days per month, giving a statutory annual entitlement of 30 working days (jours ouvrables) — equivalent to five weeks. Many collective agreements add more, and some employers track this as 25 jours ouvrés.

When does the French paid leave year run?

The default reference period runs from 1 June to 31 May. A collective agreement can align it with the calendar year, but absent such an agreement, June–May applies.

Are sick days counted as worked time for accrual?

Yes. Following Cour de cassation rulings in 2023 and the law of 22 April 2024, periods of sick leave now count as worked time for the accrual of paid leave, bringing France into line with EU law.

Can an employer refuse paid leave?

The employer sets the dates within the leave period and can refuse a specific request for legitimate operational reasons, but cannot deny the accrued entitlement itself. Employees must be given the chance to take their leave each year.

What happens to unused leave on termination?

The employer must pay an indemnité compensatrice de congés payés covering all accrued but untaken leave, regardless of why the contract ended (with narrow exceptions for gross misconduct in specific cases).

Do part-time employees get the same entitlement?

Yes. Part-time employees accrue 2.5 jours ouvrables per month worked, exactly like full-time staff. The entitlement is in days, not hours.

How Leave Balance Helps With French Compliance

Tracking 2.5-day-per-month accruals on a 1 June reference period, applying fractionnement bonus days, and re-running the higher of two holiday pay calculations is the kind of administrative drag that French SMEs do not need.

Leave Balance handles it for you:

Country-specific accrual rules for France, with the correct jours ouvrables / jours ouvrés handling.
Custom reference periods so your leave year matches your convention collective, not just the calendar.
Automatic carry-over and termination payouts that respect the indemnité compensatrice rules.
Multi-country support for teams that span France, the UK, and the rest of Europe — all on one flat $10/month plan with unlimited employees.